


It depends

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Swearing, bi Emma, some mentions of unconcensual kissing, watercooler gossip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 06:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Emma’s been through a handful of relationships in her life, but none of them have worked out, romance was never her priority after so many disasterous and uncomfortable encounters.If you ask Emma who her first boyfriend was or who her first love was, you’ll get very different answers.





	It depends

**Author's Note:**

> Bby this wasn’t the prompt for my prompt sheet today’s prompt was smn like human shield and I said no it’s romance time so here you are

“Hey! You’ll never believe who I just served!” Zoey was grinning widely, her cleaning cloth tossed over her shoulder. “You’ll never guess!”

“Who?” Nora asked, swallowing the last bite of her lunch. 

“What’s up?” Emma echoed a beat after, placing a pricing gun down on the table and dusting her hands down on her shorts. “Unless it was Peanuts the Hatchetfield pocket squirrel himself I don’t know how impressed I’ll be.” 

Zoey, who was previously standing to face Nora and Emma, turned only to face Nora. “This guy I dated as a kid when I was like, 12!” She gave a happy gasp. 

“Aww, really?” Nora gave a sweet smile. 

“Yeah! It was just sort of kid dating. You know. Nothing serious, just that ‘my mum said if it’s okay with your mum we can play after school’ sort of thing. Hah, he’s pretty hot now though really! Young Zoey had taste.” 

“Did she really though?” Emma grunted dryly, returning to pricing stock. 

“Oh yeah, I had a ‘boyfriend’ when I was five. Next door neighbour’s kid. I was always playing with him growing up. One day he gave me this little uh-“ she gestured with her hands as if the memory was too faded now to recollect. “A toy, a toy dinosaur or something. This really shitty piece of plastic, but I was head over heels in love with that boy.”

Emma snorted. 

“I dated this other boy in my freshman year, yikes, thank god he moved out of town. That was a shit show. Sweet for a month or two but then,” she made a whistling noise. “Right down the drain. Guy was an asshole. I thank Who ever is up above that I don’t have to risk running into that guy at the super market or anything.” 

Zoey shot a glance at Emma and she turned her back to her to continue pricing, over exaggerating just how busy she was. 

“Em, what abo-“

“Hey why isn’t the radio on?” Emma cut her off, dropping her pricing gun and stock on the table loudly to drown out anything Zoey could say. “Let’s turn it on. I can’t stand the silence. They’re doing a fun music count down too, heard it in the car. I really want to see what was number one.” 

“Mr. Brightside,” Zoey answered. “It’s always Mr. Brightside. That song goes off. The only reason for it not to be number one is if the count down is of the top ten worst songs, which in that case I’m curious, get it on. But it’s not. So answer the question.” The way Zoey talked always reminded Emma of an overexcited teenage girl at a sleepover. 

“You didn’t ask me a question,” she forced an awful, fake laugh. 

“Your first date, Em. C’mon. Who was it?”

Emma shrugged, her eyes rolling to the side as she thought. She let out a small, awkward laugh. “Uh, he was...” 

“Don’t tell me it’s Paul. Don’t tell me Paul is the first person you’ve ever dated. Your first kiss? Your first everything?” Nora’s jaw dropped. “Who’s the first man you ever loved, Emma. Tell us.” She dropped her boss persona as if her true, sole interest was finding out about Emma’s personal history.

Emma shook her head but then gave another shrug. “Depends how you phrase the question,” she admitted. “Like, god. You know. No, Paul wasn’t my first boyfriend. Yeah, sure. I dated a guy when I was sixteen. He was an asshole.” She spouted some generic nonsense until Zoey and Nora seemed to back off. 

“Wow, a real, modern day Romeo huh, Em?” Zoey nodded.

“He was. Yeah. But you know. We broke up, hah. Awful guy in the end. I’m gonna take the trash out before we close up.” Emma hurried past Zoey back out to the main floor, pulling out the garbage bag from the bin and tying a rough knot in the lid. She legged it back out through the back room and out the door but not before Nora could alert her to the fact there were more rubbish bags out by the dump that she had to deal with as well.

She slammed the first rubbish bag into the dump and huffed. Zoey was always too in her business, that girl could live off gossip like food. What did it matter about her first partner? She spat.

Jane was the first sister to take a partner. She only had one partner her whole life, and he became her husband. A real ‘love at first sight’ story. And so love had been complicated for her. Her parents certainly weren’t model examples of a happy relationship either. 

She heaved a cardboard box up overhead to toss it into the rubbish with a thump. “Fuck off Zoey,” She grunted. She paused before scanning the alley for any other boxes, rubbing her forearms.

She went through a phase when she was younger where all she did was watch romance stories. It all seemed so magical on screen, it was a completely different world to everything she had ever seen her whole life. 

When she was sixteen, a boy, Eric, had asked her out. Being young and new to the dating scene she didn’t have a single clue what she was supposed to do. She had looked inside herself and felt nothing. She wasn’t attracted to him in the slightest. She didn’t like his messy hair or how she was almost shorter than him. She didn’t like the way his nose looked or how dull his eyes were. He had worn the same jumper all week and he had a shitty moustache. He was excelling in half his classes and hitting rock bottom in the other.   
She stared at him too long, trying to picture waking up to that face every day. She couldn’t.   
“I don’t want to go out with you,” she had told him honestly, but for the next month he continued to ask, unrelenting.   
She had gone home after his sixth invitation to a date and put on her favourite shitty romance film to drown out her parent’s shouting at her and each other. 

“Jane,” she mumbled as the film climaxed. “There’s a boy at school.” That alone made her sister squeal with excitement. 

“A boy? Tell me everything.” 

“He keeps asking me out even though I said no. He makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t like how he looks,” she admitted honestly. 

She remembered the way Jane’s jaw dropped. “He’s totally chasing you! That’s super romantic! You should give him a shot, he must really like you!” Honestly, Jane probably didn’t know any better either. They were both sixteen, and she only had a month of dating experience on her resume. 

“Sure. I’ll go out with you,” a guilty, disgusted feeling overtook her as she gave in, and that started her six months of hell. 

She never showed Erik to her parents, it wasn’t worth the struggle or the questions. She wasn’t particularly proud of him and it just didn’t feel right. 

He would try and hold her hands when they walked to class and she would pretend her books were too heavy to hold with one hand, and that now she was late and had to hurry. 

One day she came home and cried to herself. The stress and confusion was too much. Why did it work out so perfectly in the movies? Why does Jane always talk about her boyfriend so dotingly when she could barely work up a compliment for hers? She tried to hide her sobbing. No one understood, Jane kept pressing how romantic he must be to have chased her for so long and how he always wants to hug and hold hands and be close. 

She would drown herself in more romance films, living in a better world than her reality. But it finally clicked on the day she had finished rewatching her favourite film for the dozenth time and she came to the dinner table, blocking her ears to cover her parent’s yells.   
She thought about the films and the characters and every little detail of the movies that made her so happy. The fairy tale romance, the true love and the undying, unconditional love and support. She remembered it all so clearly, she had looked up at Jane and her boyfriend just to see them share a brief kiss, and everything seemed to shatter around her.  
Her relationship with Erik was nothing like what she had seen in the films or with her sister. 

Bullshit. It was all bullshit. Emma picked up another box from the alley ground, throwing it up and letting it slam back down into her hand. She carried it with one hand just to feel the burn in her muscles, some sort of distraction from the memories she was unpacking. “Fucking stupid Erik.” 

After five months he was demanding to know why they hadn’t had their first kiss. All his friends were kissing, and she wouldn’t even hold his hand. All of a sudden she wasn’t good enough for him.  
“Yeah! Why haven’t you kissed? Don’t you love him?” Jane had frowned, she looked so sad. 

“No, it’s not that. I love him. He’s the best guy,” she had tried to explain.

But the next day Erik kissed her and she wasn’t ready for it. That was her first kiss, and it was to some scumbag who couldn’t ask first.

And that was when she got mad. So mad, this was nothing like her fairy tales or her movies. She shouted at him, shouted until her lungs and throat hurt. That was what she really knew, that was what felt familiar. She shouted and yelled and screamed at him for all he had done to her the past six months.   
It was like yelling was a talent, that was the reality she had grown up in and it had never come easier. She yelled at that kid until he had cried, and she had never apologised or seen him since. 

She gave a satisfied grunt as she finished the story in her head. Stupid Erik. She tossed another box into the dump, taking a moment to enjoy fresh air that didn’t smell like coffee. 

There was no official ‘break up’ between her and Erik. According to unwritten rules of relationships, they were still technically dating, she had never said it was over, although they hadn’t talked in a good decade now, so maybe they had broken up by default, she still didn’t know enough about it. But little sixteen year old Emma thought she had it all figured out! It didn’t work with Erik because he was a guy of course, no more men for Emma. 

She turned eighteen and took off to Guatemala with romance a distant memory. She didn’t not want to take a partner anymore. She was more than happy to travel on her own. 

Until the day she was staying in a same sex hostel, and she met a girl. 

The girl had auburn hair that cascades down her back in beautiful wavy locks. Her makeup was impeccable for someone out climbing and exploring all day, and she’d come back and show Emma flowers she had collected from the hills. She smelt like peaches half the time and vanilla the other half. She was gorgeous and beautiful and made Emma believe in love again.   
She remembered sneaking across the hall in the dead of night to crawl into her bed and share the night with her. They would climb together all day, and it felt nice to not be alone, to talk to a real human after a year or two of a self imposed isolation. 

But then Emma had to leave the hostel to move on, and the lady wasn’t coming with her. It wouldn’t work out. Of course it wouldn’t, not for Emma. 

Romance wasn’t much else for Emma from that point forward. It could never turn out well, she had learned her lesson. 

Every invite she got to Jane’s wedding and engagement parties and anniversaries went straight to the rubbish. She could care less about romance, in fact, it made her mad now. She had to actively restrain herself from beating up strangers in the streets for PDA. 

After three years of more isolation and denial and misery with her one true love being adventure as she so told herself she encountered another lady. She loved her, but what was the point in trying if it wouldn’t last. Some people asked her out but she would never reciprocate the feelings. She would never give anything to the relationship and still somehow expect so much. She placed the entire responsibility of making up for every other failed relationship upon the shoulders of anyone unfortunate enough to fall in love with her. 

She almost got addicted to it, meeting strangers at clubs and purposely breaking their hearts. Using them for mindless sex before never seeing them again and leaving them with fake phone numbers.   
If love never worked for her it shouldn’t be able to work for anyone else, that just wasn’t fair. 

She couldn’t imagine anyone pretty enough that she could bare the thought of lugging them around for the rest of her life, or giving up adventure for. She’d just get a dog, and everything would be fine. 

Yes, that was where the story ended she was fairly sure. No more real relationships or stories from Guatemala. She fell in love with the mountain views and the clean air and shitty take away meals under the vibrant night stars, she couldn’t get enough of the flowers, every colour she could ever dream of, the songs of birds and the crash of the waves. The sounds of noisy snoring in hostels and meeting a new story with a new face that she would never see again. She was quite sure she had found her love, she could do this until she was in a wheelchair. Climbing and backpacking were all that mattered to her for the rest of her duration on the island. 

Until of course, the hard part of the story, Jane’s death. Emma bit her lip and finished up with the bins. Hatchetfield, the tiny, shitty island with no hills and no flowers and no stars in the sky. She had never known how to love and that didn’t matter to her anymore really. An awkward smile came to her face and she chuckled to herself a little as she leant up against the wall to breathe in the air. It wasn’t quite Guatemala air, but it kept her alive. 

Hidgens. Professor Hidgens was the good part of her history. He taught her how she should be treated, properly and respectfully. He took the time to point out right and wrong for her, and to be a proper role model.   
She couldn’t have fallen in love with Paul if he hadn’t shown her she could. 

“Thanks, dad,” she gave a silent, joking praise to the professor and his patience.   
That was the end of the story. No more bad romances after that, things were normal again. No Erik or pretty ladies in the mountains, but no more mountains for that sake either. 

“All done out there?” Nora asked. 

“Yup. Everything’s thrown away.” She brushes her hands on her apron. “Anything else you want me to do before closing?” 

“Zoey’s done the till float. Paul’s already here to pick you up, you can head off. In tomorrow?”

“Thanks, 6 to 1 tomorrow. Have a good evening.” She didn’t put much effort into saying goodbye. She had had a rather exhausting time unpacking her personal history’s and opening old wounds. She tossed her apron onto the counter and shut the door behind her.

She spotted Paul’s car in the first park and jogged up to the passenger seat, sitting down and buckling herself up. She just wanted today to be over. 

“Hey Em, did you have a good day at work?” Paul gave her a smile.

She looked up from her lap to lock eyes with him, scanning his face for a second or two. It was familiar and calming. She liked looking at him. It was easy to picture waking up to that face every day, partly because that was already the reality, a reality she loved very dearly. 

She let out a heavy sigh, her exhaustion melting away as she already floated into a comfort. 

“Is everything okay?” He asked. 

“Hey Paul?” She asked. 

“Yeah hun?” He tilted his head slightly to the side. 

“You’re the love of my god damn life. Now let’s get home.”


End file.
